1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the construction of an air conditioner, especially an air conditioner provided with a cross flow fan as a blower.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Conventionally, an air conditioner provided with a casing having an air inlet at its upper side, an air outlet at its lower side and an air flow passage from the air inlet to the air outlet, a cross flow fan also known as "tangential fan" or "transverse fan" and a heat exchanger has been known.
As a heat exchanger for the above air conditioner, a cross fin coil comprising many heat transfer tubes fitted with many panel-shaped fins or cross fins is known for example, in Japanese Utility Model Registration Publication No. 58-49503.
However, the speed of flowing air produced by the above cross flow fan has such characteristic that it is faster at one side of the air flow passage and slower at the other side. Due to this drift of air flow, distribution of the air flow speed to the heat exchanger varies. Therefore, in the cross fin coil with the above heat transfer tube branched into plural passes which are disposed in parallel with the axial direction of the cross flow fan, distribution of air flowing speed and distribution of heat load in the air flowing direction (change of temperature) vary with each other and it is difficult to obtain a heat exchanging capacity of high level.
It is true that by disposing each pass of the heat transfer tube in a direction crossing substantially at a right angle to the axial direction of the cross flow fan, unbalance of heat exchanging capacity caused by the drift of air flow can be avoided.
However, in the above case the fin which crosses at a right angle to the heat transfer tube is arranged in a direction which is parallel to the axis of the cross flow fan. Therefore, in the case where a heat exchanger is used as an evaporator, for example, a drain receiver which receives water condensed at the cross fin coil is arranged at a position of each fin in parallel with the axis of the cross flow fan. This arrangement of the drain receiver results in a narrowing of the air flow passage and a reduction in the area of the passage. However, if this drain receiver is omitted, drain water falls into the air flow passage directly from the fin which raises a problem in practical use.
An object of the present invention is to improve the construction of the above heat exchanger, more particularly, to prevent reduction of heat exchanging capacity due to a drift of air flow by using a heat exchanger of mesh-shaped fin type, without raising the positioning problem associated with the use of a drain receiver.